Senate Candidates Evade Snitker Again At ABC Debate

Oct. 4, 2010 - PRLog -- ORLANDO – Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Alexander Snitker has once again been excluded from a televised debate scheduled for this Wednesday at 7pm between Florida Senatorial candidates.  The Debate, hosted by WFTV Channel 9, the ABC affiliate in Orlando, will include Republican Marco Rubio, Democrat Kendrick Meek, and unaffiliated candidate Charlie Crist, but Snitker was told by the organizers to stay away.

Not only was he excluded from the debate, but his staff was warned by WFTV that he would be arrested for trespassing if he attempted to enter the property.  Undeterred, he and his supporters are planning to protest outside the debate.  Snitker also plans to have a staff member monitor the debate and relay the moderators’ questions to him, so that he can give his answers to the assembled crowd and media outside the studio.

Snitker had sharp words for his Senatorial rivals.  “Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio, and Kendrick Meek are cowards.  If they would like to prove me wrong, they should agree to include me in the upcoming debates,” said Snitker.  “Why are these career politicians afraid to face a regular citizen with no political experience?”

Craig Patrick of WFTV Channel 9 said the reason for Snitker’s exclusion was that he had not achieved 10% support in a recognized statewide poll by a national pollster.  However, the polls used to determine eligibility in this debate did not include Snitker’s name as an option.  Since Snitker’s name was not included on any of the polls cited, such as Rasmussen and Quinnipiac, he had no chance of making the cut.

This has left many of his supporters and some in the media wondering if they were going out of their way to exclude the third-party upstart.

And it may not be the debate hosts that are the ones leading the charge to exclude Snitker from the debates.   Radio personality Ray Junior of the Ray Junior Show on 810 AM in Orlando, called Craig Patrick to find out why Snitker was being shunned.   Patrick claimed that Rubio, Crist and Meek would not agree to debate unless anyone with less than 10 points in the polls was excluded.

When Junior pressed him on why he would agree to that condition, Patrick would not answer, and said, “he wasn’t going to argue with me,” according to Junior.   He described the conversation by saying, “I very calmly stated I wasn’t interested in arguing, just getting my question answered, to which he hung up the phone.” After speaking with WFTV, Junior is convinced that the other candidates are pulling strings to make sure Snitker is ousted from the debates.

Snitker is a former U.S. Marine and a fully-qualified U.S. Senate candidate, and his name will appear third on the November ballot, above Charlie Crist.  He has been campaigning actively across the state, and has hundreds of volunteers working with him.

In a scientific poll conducted by Telsel in May 2010, Snitker had 12% support among likely voters familiar with all four candidates, and 3% among all voters.  Campaign media director, Adrian Wyllie said that, according to their internal data, Snitker’s support is somewhere between 8-14% among likely voters as of October 1st.

The feisty Libertarian is no stranger to having to fight for inclusion in forums and debates.  In June, he crashed a candidate form in Sarasota hosted by the Florida Press Association in which Rubio, Meek, Crist and Jeff Greene were included.  Last month, he attempted to enter the Univision studio in Miami where a Senatorial debate was being taped, but was turned away by security.

In response to the virtual media blackout of his campaign, Snitker once again took an unconventional approach by starting a weekly radio talk show.  The Alex Snitker Show broadcasts on AM 1340 and AM 1350 in the Tampa Bay market, and streams live on the Internet every Friday at 9am.  Paid for entirely by the campaign, the show talks about the issues and invites callers to ask questions directly of the candidate without any pre-screening.

References:

Snitker says Rubio afraid to debate him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXh-JFF5XPg



Snitker crashes candidate forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5sFkMXYlFE

Snitker turned away from Univision debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBK1QjIkyw4

Debate protest outside WFLA-TV Tampa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9HSK8zscc

TV ad run during Meet The Press scheduled debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BD1Za1a9TE

The Alex Snitker Show 9/24/2010: http://snitker2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2010-09-24-The-Alex-Snitker-Show-192.mp3

The Alex Snitker Show 10/1/2010: http://snitker2010.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-01-The-Alex-Snitker-Radio-Show1.mp3